Ukraine needs to taste diversity for more free money

Kiev, Ukraine. The IMF has put Ukraine on notice that if real, functional anti-corruption courts are not in place soon, the only new free money Kiev is getting from the fund, is in their imagination.

Kiev has been trying desperately to fulfill the most important obligations before the International Monetary Fund, but despite a threat to stop the flow of billions in free money, the Petro Poroshenko Administration continues a quiet refusal to stop the corruption, blocking the corruption courts from opening.

When the International Monetary Fund`s board convened on April 3, it found that the Ukrainian government had fulfilled only five out of fourteen structural reform conditions it had outlined.

The reason the IMF disbursed the fourth tranche to Ukraine, even though the government had fulfilled fewer than half of the IMF`s structural reform conditions, is that Ukraine had promised to do something and made the big mistake of taking Kiev’s word at face value. And just as Kiev lied about keeping the Minsk Agreements and promises by Groysman to sell farmland, so too have they lied in launching corruption courts as promised to the IMF.

Yet the IMF cannot ignore broad domestic and international opinion calling for severe measures against corruption and for social justice in Ukraine. The formal IMF justification is that without the corruption courts to reform Ukraine’s dirty government, future tranches of funding are no different than flushing money down a toilet for laughs.

For the next tranche, Ukraine is facing no fewer than sixteen structural conditions, but the three really important ones are the adoption of a law allowing for same sex LGBTQ marriages, farmland sales to international corporations and pension law manipulation-raising the age and lowering benefit payouts.